“And does it pay when you have to work so hard for it?”
“Oh, yes,” answered Miss Davis promptly. “All three of us are sure that it pays.”
“Three of you live together?”
“Yes. Of course there are ever so many others in the college, and I’m sure all of them would say the same thing.”
“And–I hope I’m not being rude–but do girls–do you advertise things down on that bulletin board? I don’t know much about it. I never was there but once till I went to-day on–on an errand for a friend,” Betty concluded awkwardly. Perhaps she had been an interloper. Perhaps that bulletin board had not been meant for girls like her.
Miss Davis evidently assumed that she had been to leave an order. “You ought to buy more,” she said laughingly. “But you want to know what I was there for, don’t you? Why yes, we do make a good deal off that bulletin board. One of the girls paints a little and she advertises picture frames–Yale and Harvard and Pennsylvania ones, you know. I sell blue-prints. A senior lends me her films. She has a lot of the faculty and the campus, and they go pretty well. We use the money we make from those things for little extras–ribbons and note-books and desserts for Sunday. We hoped to make quite a bit on valentines—”
“Valentines?” repeated Betty sharply.
“Yes, but a good many others thought of it too, and we didn’t get any orders–not one. Ours weren’t so extra pretty and it was foolish of me to be so disappointed, but we’d worked hard getting ready and we did want a little more money so much.”
They had reached Betty’s door by this time, and Miss Davis hurried on, saying it was her turn to get supper and begging Betty to come and see them. “For we’re very cozy, I assure you. You mustn’t think we have a horrid time just because–you know why.”
Betty went straight to Mary’s room, which, since she had no roommate to object to disorder, had been the chief seat of the valentine industry.